Mom's recommendation: a fat glass of wine.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.



-Hafiz



I think I have the potential to become a little bit obsessed with Hafiz. I'm discovering things about him now, or trying to, in the 20 minutes I have left to be in this coffeeshop before I walk home for dinner. It's raining out, and a guy just opened the door and asked if he could bring his bike in. The barista said yes, of course, "you don't want to bike in that." The biker hoisted the handle bars upward, and brought the wheel over the lone step. "I do, actually. But I'm meeting someone."

But Hafiz. I think, he is persian, or that's what this website says that I am looking at. The person who constructed the page says he is mystical. And beautiful. And from the 7 minutes I spent reading it, I would have to agree. It was Robert, a JV from Seattle, who visited our house last weekend, who first introduced me, as he sat at our kitchen table reading quotes from his anthology while the rest of us did dishes or ate the contents of our cabinents. So now, I'm happy to have his words in my life.

Today was a hard day. One of those frightening days that leaves you incredibly angry at a person for treating you like crap, no matter how ill they are, and then hopeless. How can you do anything in the midst of aggression? You can't, really. You can take a deep breath until your eyes fill with tears and you're directed to one of a small room in the back of the clinic where people who have been doing this a lot longer of you give you a small cup of water, and a hug, and tell you that it will all be okay.

So that was my first day back from the first JVC cascade region retreat. Which was beautiful, at a place where I could look out at the water and see tall trees stretching for miles. We ate lots of beans and fiber, talked about our personality types, and took fewer showers. It was good to get away for a few days. To be surrounded by flannel. To step back and remind myself there is still a lot to see when it's raining.